Home Boys (21 page)

‘Don’t have to.’ A pause. Waiting for something that wasn’t on offer.

‘So you’re not coming?’

‘I don’t think you should go.’

‘I’m going.’
But
I
don’t
want
to,
and
I
wish
I’
d
never
said
it,
in his voice. ‘Are you coming too?’

‘No, I’m not. I think it’s stupid, is all.’

Veronica, who had stayed clear of the argument, squeezed harder on Colin’s hand at the sound of his friend’s footsteps, taking him slowly to the entrance of the cave.

‘You’re soft.’ Dougal called and then, Colin imagined, waited at the opening, for a response, before feeling his way into the rock.

L
IGHT rain fell on the fly above, the only sound. Colin rested his head against his forearm but the darkness was so complete he could not see it. Dougal had been gone a while, and neither sleep nor conversation had filled the gap. Veronica was awake too. Colin could feel it in her breathing, the rise and fall of her back against his side. There were words which would fit in a place like this, surely, but Colin did not know them.

I
wonder
how
long
he’ll
stay
in
there?
he asked inside his head a hundred times, and then
Do
you
think
he’s
all
right?
To fill the gap. He didn’t wonder, and he didn’t worry either. His thoughts were here, with Veronica. Dougal wasn’t a part of the things he wanted to say.

A body cannot sink into hard ground. Stones grow large and uncomfortable, blood stops flowing, numbness and pain imitate one another, discomfort scrapes at the edges of unconsciousness. You wake, turn, settle again. They turned, together, so that Veronica’s breath was close and warm on his face. Colin pretended to be asleep, breathed in her breath, gave it back.
Waited. She squirmed, to make herself more comfortable. He squirmed too, in the manner of a sleeper, but with the careful motivation of a boy, alone with a girl. In the darkness he felt her body against his, her arm across him, her hand against his back, not asleep. His heartbeat began its own conversation, loud, hard, insistent. His breath resisted, slowed, called for calm. Her cheek was warm against his. Her legs parted, so that one of his own was trapped between them, damp trouser leg against damp trouser leg. Her breasts squashed against his delighted, panicked chest.

And it was dark. Black. Empty as a cave. If Colin concentrated on just that, let his breath win the battle against his pulse, this was no place at all. The ground beneath him left his exposed side alone. Held him, that was all. Her breath grew warmer, until there was a familiar taste to it, and a touch, a kiss. Her tongue touched his and he withdrew it in sudden surpise. He felt the corners of her mouth tighten to a smile. Her hand moved down to the back of his leg and pulled it further forward. Her own legs moved, renewed their purchase. It was happening. Colin knew that much. And all he had to do was be careful not to disturb it, not give it a reason for ending. His own hand moved; was not moved, moved itself. Found the highest point, her hip, rested, continued. He was learning to breathe again. Finding it held within for too long, having to remind himself to let it out, breathe in, forgetting once more.

The darkness slowed time, absorbed it. She rolled on top of him. Gentle, the way a dream would choose it to be. Colin felt Veronica’s hair fall against his face as she kissed him again, as he kissed her back. Her hands against his skin; stomach, chest,
bunching his jersey against his neck. Then her own jersey was gone, and the shirt beneath it. Their skin sweated at the touch. He was not there. This was no place. If he was asked,
what
did
you
do?
he
could answer,
I
didn’t.

Her back, two strong chords of muscle, the cavity between them flattening at the point where his hands found her trousers. Veronica rose as far as the tent fly allowed. Cold air rushed in to repair the places where their skin had touched. Colin felt her hands at his trousers, did not resist. Understood. Listened, felt, breathed. Wriggling, shedding skins, an elbow in his stomach but he did not mind, adjusted his breathing, that was all. Skin against skin, the cool air forced to retreat, smooth, perfect. Colin’s hands found new curves in the darkness. Hair. Veronica’s breasts fell to him, her nipples brushed against his chest.

A thought escaped into this empty place.
Do
not
think
was all it said.
Do
not
think.
And it was gone. She moved, he held his breath, again. Her hands, one on either side of his shoulder, carrying the weight of this. He felt it happen, a moment’s uncertainty, a point between now and then. She lowered herself and he was held, warm and close inside her. Darkness pressed closer, held them together. Colin was aware of boundaries dissolving. He ended where she ended. Breathing, and thinking, and time stepped aside.

Then a new feeling, as if the world had held its breath long enough, building a new need. Colin fought against it, and then, when this feeling would not be resisted, fought against her. She had her hands beneath him, claws in his back, as if it might be possible to pull herself right through him. Her hair was in his hands, his face against her neck. He wanted this to never
end, and he wanted this to end right now. Like he’d never wanted anything. The boundaries became clear again, every muscle, every cell in place. And it was over. And different. Everything was different. Except not knowing what it was he should say, needing Veronica to take the lead. That hadn’t changed.

Time began again. Sharp stones dug into the small of his back. Cold air swirled at his neck. Water ran down the inside of the fly, tapped him on the shoulder. The sounds came back. Her breathing, slowing down. Leaves rearranging their patterns in the wind, rain turned to streams, running beneath them, searching out the lowest places. A morepork seeking out its mate, a moment of waiting, a reply. And nearby, Colin heard something else. The sound not of quiet, but of an imitation of quiet. Close and awake, listening. Dougal. Not stupid enough to spend a night in the cave, if he didn’t have to. Colin smiled to himself, at the thought of what might be inside his friend’s head just now, and the weight of Veronica still atop him.

Veronica kissed him, lightly, the fullstop at the end of a private story. They dressed. Colin felt cold and exposed and was tangled by the hurry of it. Veronica turned without speaking, and backed into him. He put his arms around her stomach and pulled himself closer, and pretended to be asleep.

There would be no sleeping. Colin closed his eyes and the darkness did not change. He tried to relax, trick the dreams into appearing, but he knew there was no point. There were no more dreams. The Grey Man was dead. The fire had long since turned cold, the ashes were well raked over. And he knew
now, the who and the where and the why, so what was left for dreaming?

The cave had stopped its breathing; served its purpose, back to being just a waterway through a rockface, so why dream of that? Gino was gone. Colin knew that too, didn’t need a dream to tell him. Adrift, with no Veronica to anchor him to the village, and Colin would never see him again. These things are clear enough, when the dreaming stops. And Veronica. She was here, for now. Colin could feel her breathing, could push the bottom of his stomach against her backside, bring his knees up behind hers. And, in the silence of Dougal’s listening, Colin could hear something else, the smallest sniffs of Veronica’s secret tears, because whatever it was that had happened between them, it was as nothing lined up against all the things they hadn’t shared.

So Colin waited for daylight, and it took its time coming. Slow and grey and cold. Dougal returning from the direction of the cave, where only minutes before Colin had heard him creep. Veronica and Colin together, pretending to be woken by his greeting.

‘I’m back. How did you sleep without me?’

‘Grand,’ Colin lied. ‘How was the cave?’

‘It was grand too,’ Dougal lied back. ‘Nothing to it. Come on, get up and help me take this fly down, before the rain comes again.’

‘I don’t think it’s going to.’

‘Expert on the weather now are we?’

‘Just saying.’

‘What’s for breakfast then?’ Veronica asked.

‘Depends how far there is left: to walk,’ Dougal answered.

‘Couple of days and we’ll be in Martinborough.’

‘We can eat them biscuits then. Colin, take that bottle and find us some water.’

As if nothing had changed, and there was something comforting in that, Colin thought, even if it wasn’t true.

A small truck stopped for them, like the Sowbys’, only with a wooden frame around the deck. It was on the second morning, when bush had turned to scrub and then to grass, and the paddocks in turn had paused for a road. The smell of it, at gateways, where hooves and cow shit churned the ground to mud, scratched at old scars in Colin’s head. The feel of it between his feet, the uneven clumps of long sweet grass, sharp and crunching with morning frost, the sight of cows, eyes dark and curious, breath steaming from their nostrils, the hills beyond, dark green, lazing but alert; these things greeted him, said their hellos, looked away, apologised even, when he thought of them too long, thought of the Sowbys.

‘Strange isn’t it?’ Dougal, beside him, leaning on the last fence before the seal. Veronica further back, apart, the way it had been that day.

‘Yeah.’

‘You all right?’

‘Course I am.’

‘So am I.’

‘I know that.’

‘We should wait here now, get a ride into town.’

‘Then what?’ Colin asked. Veronica had caught up, but climbed the fence and settled herself down on the other side of
the road, where morning sun had managed to dry a patch of gravel.

‘Getting work on a farm aren’t I?’ Dougal told him. ‘Same as you are.’

‘Yeah, save money to go back home.’

‘Maybe.’

Colin looked across to where Veronica was sitting, collecting stones in her hands and throwing them one by one at the posts of a wooden gate, twenty yards down the fenceline. He wondered how to say it. Dougal followed his eyes, said it for him.

‘You can’t go with her you know.’

‘I know that. Maybe she’s going to stay here too though. She could get work, on a farm.’

‘Her father’d find her, soon enough. Anyway, she has to get to the city. She told me.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think? Find a doctor.’

‘I knew that.’

‘No you didn’t.’

The truck pulled up to Veronica’s smile. A farmhand doing the driving, just a dog for company, barking in the back. The man was in his early twenties by the look of him, big ears growing out from a field of short, prickly hair, a line of angry red pimples where his short fringe met his forehead. The boys had their sacks up on the deck before he’d seen them.

He smiled, as if he’d been tricked, and pointed to the back with his thumb.

‘All right then, but you two are with the dog. No, not you, plenty of room for you up front.’ He jumped out of the cab and ran round the front, opened the door for her.

‘I’m Andrew.’

‘Veronica.’

The dog snarled once, sniffed them both, licked Colin’s face, then returned to its frenzy of barking as the truck lurched forward. Through the dust-smeared window Colin could see Veronica, laughing too loudly at some joke the driver had tried to make. He turned back to Dougal, whose eyes were fixed on the thick green of blurring winter paddocks, and whose body bounced and shook in exactly the way the truck demanded.

BERNARD BECKETT grows older in Wellington. He has a new computer and a short attention span. He blames both these things on his genes.
Home
Boys
is his fifth novel.

Publisher’s
note:
Bernard Beckett is one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent writers of young adult fiction.
Home
Boys
is his fifth novel,
Lester,
Red
Cliff,
Jolt
and
No
Alarms
having received between them critical acclaim, a
shortlisting
in the New Zealand Post Book Awards and a
listing
on the Notable New Zealand Young Adult Books.

Lester
1999

Red Cliff
2000

Jolt
2001

No Alarms
2002